We construct a long daily panel of short sales using proprietary NYSE order data. During 2000-2004, shorting accounts for more than 12.9% of NYSE volume, suggesting that short-sale constraints are not widespread. As a group, these short sellers are quite well-informed. Heavily shorted stocks...

We document considerable return comovement associated with accruals after controlling for other common factors. An accrual-based factor-mimicking portfolio has a Sharpe ratio of 0.16, higher than that of the market factor or the SMB and HML factors of Fama and French (1993). According to...